Advent’s a way off, and Lent isn’t in sight, but on Wednesday, 39 Ohio House Republicans confessed anyway — to hypocrisy.

They published a formal protest in the Ohio House Journal, something the Ohio Constitution allows any member of the General Assembly to do. Their gripe: Gov. John Kasich, a fellow Republican, filed a Medicaid-expansion request with the state Controlling Board. The board is expected to vote on Kasich’s request Monday.

The Controlling Board, created in 1917, has seven members. Six of them are members of the General Assembly. The seventh is a president from the state Budget Office representing Kasich’s administration. It requires least four Controlling Board votes to expand Medicaid.

So, finally, Ohio has landed a team in the World Series — of Hypocrisy — because just one thing keeps the Ohio House’s Republican caucus from voting Medicaid expansion up or down. That one thing is . . . the Ohio House’s Republican caucus.

The reason is that if Speaker William G. Batchelder, R-Medina, let the GOP-run House vote on Medicaid expansion, it’d pass. And to House Republicans, any Medicaid expansion vote, either way it went, would be bad news for them politically.

Reason No. 1: Batchelder, a credentialed conservative, doesn’t want history to record that during his speakership, a job he worked 40 years to get, he presided over a House vote to expand Medicaid. Of course, if John Kasich, taking another Statehouse route, can still get to expand Medicaid, well, hey, the General Assembly will just have to let the Lord sort it all out.

Reason No. 2: The last thing the 60 House Republicans want is a recorded, plain-vanilla, no gimmick, up-or-down Medicaid vote. At a minimum, such a House roll call might give Republican primary-election challengers ammunition against GOP incumbents who seek re-nomination May 7.

Thus, a few House Republicans who signed Wednesday’s protest may, as someone said, actually be for Medicaid expansion. The protest lets them have it both ways. Publicly, they can denounce Kasich’s Controlling Board request. Privately, they can rejoice in it.

While lots of Ohio House Republicans may hate other House Republicans, what they all hate more is the thought of losing a House majority. And Batchelder is known to believe that one thing that lost Republicans an Ohio House majority (for 22 years) was a 1971 caucus split over Ohio’s income tax. There’s no point handing challengers ammunition: Primary fights can cost a caucus money it’d rather save for November.

Batchelder himself signed the protest. That seemed to signal a split with Kasich. But Batchelder likes Machiavellian moves complicated as a Rubik’s Cube or a 3-D chess set. Maybe signing the protest let grandstanders do what they do best, grandstand, so Batchelder could do what he does best: Silently slide chess pieces around the board. Batchelder’s philosophy seems akin to the daily toast of one-time Florida boss Ed Ball: “Confusion to the enemy.”

Ohio has had to endure a soap opera over Medicaid expansion while Republican Michigan Gov. Rick (“Right to Work — for less”) Snyder and Arizona Gov. Jan (“Finger in Obama’s Face”) Brewer got expansion done in their states.

Fortunately, the curtain is about to drop in Columbus. Though predictions from this corner have a shaky track record, here goes: The Controlling Board will expand Medicaid. And the vote will be 5-2.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University.